North Atlantic Cooperation Council

North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers and their former foes from Eastern Europe, including Russia, on Monday urged Bosnia's Serbs to accept a Western-sponsored peace plan to end the fighting in the former Yugoslav republic.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers and their former foes from Eastern Europe, including Russia, on Monday urged Bosnia's Serbs to accept a Western-sponsored peace plan to end the fighting in the former Yugoslav republic.

December 21, 1991 | WILLIAM TUOHY and NORMAN KEMPSTER, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, in a letter that surprised the inaugural session of a new grouping of former East-West enemies, declared Friday that Russia hopes to join NATO as part of a "long-term political aim." The Russian leader informed the meeting of the new North Atlantic Cooperation Council, a group of foreign ministers from East and West nations, that he fully supports efforts "to create a new system of security from Vancouver to Vladivostok."

December 21, 1991 | WILLIAM TUOHY and NORMAN KEMPSTER, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, in a letter that surprised the inaugural session of a new grouping of former East-West enemies, declared Friday that Russia hopes to join NATO as part of a "long-term political aim." The Russian leader informed the meeting of the new North Atlantic Cooperation Council, a group of foreign ministers from East and West nations, that he fully supports efforts "to create a new system of security from Vancouver to Vladivostok."

Foreign ministers from NATO and the successor states of the former Warsaw Pact will meet in the Belgian capital Friday to discuss prospects for deepening cooperation between the onetime Cold War enemies. A total of 38 nations will be represented at the North Atlantic Cooperation Council talks. They are expected to concentrate on a variety of issues, including the prospects of joint training for peacekeeping missions and the feasibility of a recent U.S.

NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner on Tuesday proclaimed a new era of partnership with Russia, the alliance's old Cold War foe, but said that actual Russian membership in NATO is not in the offing. "They did not request membership," he told reporters as he wrapped up a three-day visit to Russia and Ukraine.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Western alliance that won the Cold War, is struggling to carve out a new mission for itself--a mission that some members said Tuesday should be as a military peacekeeper for all of Europe, both East and West. The alliance on Tuesday welcomed all but one of the republics of the former Soviet Union--the remnants of the superpower that NATO was formed to resist--into a new security body, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its former foes in Eastern Europe signed a historic but long-delayed treaty here Friday that aims to vastly reduce arsenals of tanks, artillery, armored vehicles and other conventional weapons in Europe.

Before departing on a trip to meet with NATO and European military leaders, Defense Secretary Les Aspin outlined an ambitious plan Friday for military operations among selected nations that would address changing post-Cold War security needs.

To see the fighting as a chronic ethnic conflict, however, is to miss a sudden, horrendous worsening of it. All-out war has raged in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina only since March when the Croat and Muslim Slav portions of the Bosnian population voted for independence in an election that the Bosnian Serb minority boycotted. And yet of the million refugees, 70% are now Bosnians.

Russia and NATO could soon stage joint military exercises, exchange junior officers and train peacekeepers together as the former Cold War enemies move "from a partnership of words to a partnership of deeds," U.S. Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, NATO's top commander in Europe, said Saturday. Wrapping up a four-day visit to Russia, Shalikashvili also said that Russian officers could begin studying in NATO military schools.

Not long ago, Hungarian diplomat Tibor Kiss regarded the fenced-in, low-slung headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization here as a forbidding fortress--definitely off limits to East European officials. But times have changed, and today Kiss, the embassy's No. 2 man, finds himself invited often to NATO to talk to officials there on a wide range of political and security matters.